Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Michael Crichton More Quotes by Michael Crichton More Quotes From Michael Crichton All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself. Michael Crichton accomplishmentpridepeople When I sit down in front of a Windows machine, I can't write; when I sit down in front of my Mac, I can write. So I only use Macs. Michael Crichton machinesusewriting But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching. Michael Crichton dnateachinganimal For our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. Michael Crichton speciesevolutionbehavior The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. Michael Crichton jargonacademicworld The rules of grammar exist in large part to permit readers and writers to operate from a shared set of expectations. Michael Crichton grammarpermitexpectations One of the most difficult things for a writer in this business to accept is the uncertain fate of one's work. Michael Crichton fateuncertainaccepting Extrapolating from the statistical growth of the legal profession, by the year 2035 every single person in the United States will be a lawyer, including newborn infants. Michael Crichton united-statesgrowthyears False fears are a plague, a modern plague! Michael Crichton plaguemodernsociology Expectation works in mysterious ways---and totally unconsciously. Michael Crichton mysterious-waysexpectationsway The romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die. Michael Crichton edenspiritualanimal The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Michael Crichton unhappypersonalitythinking To apply general tools to specific problems is to fail. Michael Crichton failingtoolsproblem You can't get decent Mexican food in DC. Michael Crichton mexican-fooddecentmexican Men under stress are fools, and fool themselves. Michael Crichton foolstressmen Grant knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years - the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died. Michael Crichton animalchildrenyears Geniuses never pay attention. Michael Crichton geniuspayattention I want a news service that tells me what no one knows but is true nonetheless. Michael Crichton newsknowswant Having wallowed in a delightful orgy of anti-French sentiment, having deplored and applauded the villains themselves, having relished the foibles of bankers, railwaymen, diplomats, and police, the public was now ready to see its faith restored in the basic soundness of banks, railroads, government, and police. Michael Crichton policegovernmentbankers In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. Michael Crichton agedarkpeople
